Top of Page

Some of the promises we make can get us into trouble even beyond the grave. Here is a story of death and redemption from beyond the grave.

The Comedy Lounge

By Dave Landrum

Carrie Loy swept the floor at Millie’s, a comedy club she had played several times. The bristles made a loud sound in the deserted lounge where people did comedy and music. The owner, Cal, rented a room for her in the back of the place at a good rate; part of the deal was cleaning up at night after he closed and went home. She had wiped down the tables, emptied and washed ashtrays, put the glasses and plates in the dish-washing machine, polished the bar, taken out the trash, and now was at her last task before going to bed. She would mop in the morning.

Carrie played bass and sang in a country band called Coon Dog County. She also did solo shows. Her solo performances featured a mixture of country and pop together with humor. She had, in fact, played at Millie’s a week ago and the show had gone well. The audience responded to her songs and laughed at her jokes. Maybe she would do more of the solo and more of comedy, she thought as she swept. Getting along with the other members of CoonDogCounty was hard; the band had one other female member and there was a lot of bad blood between them. Carrie got the dirt into a central pile, swished it into a dustpan, and dumped it. She went back to her room, showered, and fell into bed, exhausted. She was awakened by the sound of someone playing the piano.

She wondered if Cal had dropped in, though that would have been odd behavior for Cal.

She pulled on a pair of shorts and a sweatshirt and walked into the barroom.

A woman in black slacks and a purple blouse sat at the battered house piano and played a tune. Carrie came out of sleepiness enough to recognize it was the old Bobby Goldsboro song, “Honey.” The woman had dark hair cut short, a long nose and big eyes. She looked vaguely familiar but Carrie could not place here. Maybe a relative of Cal’s, she thought.

“Hello,” she said.

The woman stopped playing and turned to face her. She smiled. Her smiled looked at once mischievous and sad.

“Who are you and how did you get in here?” Carrie asked.

“I walked through the walls,” the woman said.

Sleepy and hung over, and a little afraid at this point, Carrie did not take well to her attempt at humor.

“Look, I know I locked the place.”

“You locked it. But you should have put some garlic out. Bread on the top of the door-posts works too.”

The woman did not look dangerous, but criminals or serial killers usually did not. If she had broken in to the bar she could only mean trouble. Carried turned and hurried toward her room. She could lock the door and call the police on her cell phone. But before she had gone three steps, she stopped and screamed. The woman stood right in front of her. How she had gotten around her so quickly and silently, and without being seen, she did not know.

The woman smiled, not looking like she meant harm. But Carrie’s heart began to race. She took several steps backward.

“When I said I walked through the walls, I told the truth.”

Then she disappeared.

“Gotcha!”

Carrie screamed and whirled around to see the woman behind her. She was transparent, a bluish color, and Carrie could see right through her. Then she resumed a normal, solid appearance and put her hands on Carrie’s shoulders.

“If you’ll let me explain—I’m not going to hurt you.”

Carrie stood there, wide-eyed, her face white, unable to speak or move. The woman smiled. Her nose twitched.

“Shit you pants?” she queried.

Carrie nodded.

“That’s okay. A little trouser chili can bring us around to reality.”

“Are you a vampire?” Carried managed to squeak, remembering what she said about garlic.

The woman laughed. “No. Not a vampire. And, like I said, I’m not going to hurt you.”

“How . . . why?” She tried to form sentences but her voice did not work. Her throat was constricted with fear.

“I’ll tell you what, honey. Why don’t you get a shower and wash theMississippi mud off your butt? That will calm you down and then we can talk.”

Carrie could feel the encumbrance. The presence of this woman who had just given her evidence of supernatural power, had immobilized her. The woman grinned.

“Okay, let’s get the cards on the table. I’m not a vampire but I am a ghost.You know: Casper, the Ghost of Marley, the Ghost of Christmas Past, Thirteen Ghosts. I’m not here to haunt this place or to scare you.”

Carrie only stared. The woman threw back her head and laughed.

“I wish you could see yourself. I’m the one who’s supposed to be white and pale. You look like you could float off and blend in with all the snow outside.”

“I just don’t know what to say. Are you really a ghost—or is this some kind of a joke someone is pulling on me?”

“Jokes are my business. And it is a joke, in a way, to be a ghost. But”—she sighed—“let me give you a demonstration.”

She disappeared then reappeared standing on the pool table; then the bar, the tops of four tables, and then balancing on the brass chandelier that hung above the dance floor; she floated down from there, turned purple, and suddenly had chains on her wrists; she raised her arms and rattled the chains, making a terrifying moaning noise. After that she vanished and reappeared, looking like she had at first, in front of Carrie. Then she turned transparent.

“Have I proved my point?”

“Yes.” Carrie nodded, unable to say more. Though still unable to say much, she felt less afraid in knowing how to understand the woman.

“You smell,” she said, becoming solid once more.

“Okay.” Carrie managed to relax a little. “Okay. I’ll get cleaned up. I’ll take a shower and change clothes.”

“Don’t run away, Carrie. I’ll say it again: I’m not going to hurt you!”

“I won’t run away.”

“I saw you have a guitar in your room. Can I play it?”

“I guess so.”

She walked toward her room, scared to have a ghost following her. She wanted to make a break for the door but, remembering the apparition’s ability to materialize and rematerialize, doubted she would have much chance of escaping her. And she had not been hostile or menacing. Once they were in the small room, Carrie pointed to the guitar.

“Feel free to play it.”

She stepped into her tiny bathroom. As she turned on the water she heard the woman start to play. She washed, rinsed out the soiled underwear, and let the water run over her. She felt bruised from fear; the heat of the shower soothed her. She entertained the idea she might be insane or this might be a dream. But what did it matter either way? She turned off the water, hung her underwear on the cold faucet handle to dry, reached for a towel, wrapped it around herself, and emerged.

The woman strummed Carrie’s Gibson. She looked up cheerfully.

“Feel better?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Sorry I scared you.”

“Well . . . I guess that’s part of the job, isn’t it?”

“Can be. Not so much for me.”

“What’s your name?” And she looked more closely, adding, “I feel like I’ve seen you before.”

“You might have. I’m Sylvia Forster.”

Puzzlement filled Carrie’s mind. Then she remembered. Sylvia Forster had been a local comedienne. She had been killed two years ago.

“Yes. I saw you once at Dr. Grins. You were funny.”

“Thanks. That’s always nice to hear.”

Then she remembered more. Sylvia noticed her expression.

“You remember the other part about me, I see.”

Carrie stared. Finally she was able to organize her thoughts enough to reply.

“Yes, I do remember. Why did you do what you did, Sylvia?”

“Get dressed and I’ll tell you. You’re making me nervous standing there wrapped in a towel like a World War II pin-up girl.”

Carrie got clothes out of her dresser. Not wanting to be naked in front of this ghost, she stepped back into the privacy of the shower. When she emerged Sylvia had put the guitar down. She folded her hands and looked up at Carrie.

“It was an accident,” she said. “I didn’t mean to kill anyone. Well, I should correct that: I only meant to kill myself. I swear! If I had know what was going to happen I would have done something more sensible like blow my brains out or drink Drano.”

Sylvia Forster had run her car into a light pole at high speed. The authorities ruled it a suicide. Her vehicle rebounded from the pole, crossed two lanes of traffic, and slammed into a SUV, killing a family of four.

Carrie stared at her. Sylvia signed and looked down.

“They all went to heaven,” she said. “They’re in the good place. I know that.It’s a shame the kids didn’t get to live their lives, but they’re living inParadise and they’re happy. They’re where they are and I’m where I am.”

“You’re here,” Carrie said.

“I’m here now, but I only come here once in a while.”

“Are you in”—she could not say the word. She stared at Sylvia.

“Sit down. I can’t talk to you with you standing there like that, towering over me. Sit and I’ll explain.”

Carrie pulled the only chair in her room over in front of Sylvia. She looked genuinely miserable. She sat, silent, for a while, as if composing her speech.Then she spoke.

“I was terribly depressed. Four relationships in a row had self-destructed. I’d bottomed out. You know how hard it is to make a living as a performer, and I was always broke, desperate, and hungry. One boyfriend got me pregnant and I got an abortion. I tried it with a woman a few months and decided, No.Then I spent two years with a man I really started to love. We split up. And I started to have a string of really bad shows. You may have had a shitty performance or two, Carrie, but you have no idea how traumatic it is when you’re doing comedy and people stop laughing. One day I was driving around because I didn’t want to go home and be alone. I was crying and finally decided I couldn’t take it anymore. I got up my old clunky car up to 110 and drove straight into the light pole. I didn’t think about other people being hurt.I guess I should have, but when you’re that depressed you don’t think straight. I just couldn’t take the pain anymore. I didn’t mean to kill those people. It was an accident. I didn’t mean to!”

She did not cry but spoke with such anguish Carrie thought she might cry. The desolate look on Sylvia’s face confirmed her sincerity.

“I’d do anything . . . anything to make it right. I’d go to hell if I thought that might undo what I did and bring those poor people back to life. But it doesn’t work that way.”

“Are you being punished for it? Are you”—

“Am I in hell? That’s an interesting question and I have to say, first, no;then, yes. I’m here now. I come here from time to time—back to Earth, I mean, back among the living. But when I’m not here, I’m there.”

“Where?”

“Not hell—not exactly, and not Purgatory, but sort of like it; it’s like being on . . . the outskirts of hell. I’m not tormented, but I stay in a shabby, run-down, dark place. It’s desolate and I’m all alone there. Where I live is cold and smelly. I’ve been back to Earth quite a few times. Each time it’s harder to get out of the other place. I’m afraid soon I won’t able to get out. And the last couple of nights—I can see a glow off in the distance and I can hear”—she shuddered. “Well, you know. And they’re watching me more closely and getting nearer the place where I live. I think if I don’t accomplish my task pretty soon they’ll come for me.”

“Who?”

“I think you know who I mean.”
Carrie nodded. Silence—oddly intimate given the fact they had just met—settled. After a long moment, Carrie spoke.

“What is your task?”

Sylvia looked straight at her.

“My task is to make people cry.”

Carrie gave her a puzzled look.

“Let me explain that too. I spent my whole adult life trying to make people laugh. But I didn’t make myself laugh. And in the end, I made people cry when I caused the death of that family. When I got to the other side I knew I hadn’t gone straight to the bad place because I really didn’t meant to kill those poor people. I knew I had a chance of getting out. So I was sent back to do just the opposite of what I’d spent all my days doing. I was sent back to make people cry instead of laugh—because that’s what I did to that family and to everyone who knew them.”

After a moment Carried sad, “At least you had a chance.”

“Yes. But a chance doesn’t go on forever. I’ve been back ten times. This is time eleven. I haven’t succeeded. A cat has nine lives but only nine. I feel like I’m getting to the end of my rope.”

“How do you try to make people cry?”

“I sing sad songs.”

“Like what?”

“‘The River,’ ‘Back to Black,’ ‘Concrete Angel,’ ‘Hallelujah,’ ‘Tears in Heaven,’ ‘Alone Again, Naturally,’ ‘Rainy Days and Mondays,’ ‘The Needle and the Damage Done,’ ‘Eleanor Rigby.”

“Those are sad.”

“Not sad enough. Nobody cries.”

“Did I hear you playing ‘Honey.’?”

“Yes. People are more likely to laugh at that one than cry.”

“That’s for sure. People aren’t into crying in public.”

A thought came to Carrie.

“You’re playing here tonight, are you? Won’t people recognize you?”

“Ghosts can shape-shift, like Odo on Deep Space Nine. I can turn into other people. I can make myself look like anyone. Name a celebrity.”

“Marilyn Monroe.”

In an instant—Carrie did not see a transition at all—Sylvia turned into a perfect simulacra of Marilyn Monroe, complete with a mole on her cheek, garish red lipstick, platinum blonde hair, and a blue décolletage. Carrie stared with amazement. Sylvia returned to being herself.

“So I’ll have a different face and body on stage tomorrow.”

Silence came. It seemed they had nothing more to talk about.

“I wish you the best,” Carrie finally said.

“Thanks, sweetie. I need all the good wishes I can get. I think I’ve spent about everything in my bank account.”

“Will you be here tonight? Do you need a place to sleep?”

“We don’t sleep. I do need to practice a little if that’s okay. I don’t want to keep you up but I need to work on a couple of songs. When the sun comes up I’ll fade away. So I’ll work a little bit on the ivories if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind.”

Carrie stood there feeling strangely bonded to her new, improbable friend.

“Thanks for listening,” Sylvia said. “It’s nice to talk to someone—I mean to talk about what I’ve been through and am going through.” She paused. “It gets pretty lonely where I am now. I realize that will be the most horrible part of it if I end up staying there.”

Carrie touched her.

“We’ll just hope you can pull it off tomorrow night.”

“Tonight,” Sylvia said. “It’s 3 a.m.”

Carrie went to bed wondering about her sanity. But the whole thing seemed plausible. She remembered seeing pictures of Sylvia in the newspaper and on TV after the accident; once she had seen her do stand-up. There was no mistaking it, unless she was suddenly schizophrenic like the guy on A Beautiful Mind and constructing an imaginary world. But it was one that included shitting your pants and hearing piano music in the next room. It did not seem plausible that such an experience with such tangible features could be illusory—at least not in such a sudden onset. She heard Sylvia playing “Honey” once more. The music stopped then started. She got out of her bed, took a quilt form her closet, and added it to her covers. It was cold outside; a clear night, the sky black, a slender crescent of moon shining on six inches of new snow. What would it be like, she wondered, to do a show, the consequences of that show being whether you would go to hell or get out and have a chance to get to heaven? Looking out the window at the moon and listening to the host of Sylvia Forester practicing piano, Carrie finally drifted off to sleep.

She woke up and tried to tell herself it had been a dream. She got dressed and went into the bar. A note was taped above the keyboard of the piano.

Carrie—Hi, and it was not a dream; no, you are not crazy.

I’m actually here but you can’t see me. You didn’t do a

very good job of washing those nice lavender panties you

soiled (you were too scared to pay much attention to what

you were doing), so I scrubbed them for you in the sink and

dried them off. I will be visible again when the sun goes down.

Let’s hope for the best at tonight’s performance.

----Sylvia

She stared at the letter, went back in her room, and found her underwear washed perfectly clean, dry and folded, on top of the toilet, not hung on the faucet where she had left them. She looked around. The furnace kicked on, as it always did, at 7:00. Cal programmed the thermostat so the building was cooler in the small hours of the morning. She needed to mop, she thought wearily. She planned to spend the morning with her mother and then had practice with the band at 3:00.

As she went about her duties she debated. Could it have been real? Carrie did not believe much in the supernatural. But she knew what she had seen.Was it that far-fetched to believe someone might live after death and be given a task to do?

She visited her mother, did some other chores, parked and went into Millie’s.

Cal sat at a table with a red-haired woman who looked vaguely like Shawn Colvin. Callooked up and waved.

“Have you met our performer for tonight?”

She had but said she had not. Cal introduced them and said he would get drinks. He seemed in a chipper mood.

“Are you Shawn Colvin tonight?” Carrie asked when he left.

“Do I look like her? I was listening to her music this morning.”

“You do a little.”

“Well, if that will make the audience cry tonight I’m will to go for it.”

A thought suddenly fell into Carrie’s mind, like a stone splashing in a still pond. She leaned over and started to say something to Sylvia, but Calcame back just then with their drinks. They began to drink and chat.Unfortunately, Cal was particularly gregarious tonight.

As the time drew near for Sylvia to go on stage, Carrie tried to get her attention, to get her away just long enough to talk, but Cal, who had swallowed a few too many drinks, was dominating the conversation and coming on to Sylvia. Right before the show was to begin, Carrie scribbled the word GOLLUX on a cardboard coaster and slipped it into Sylvia’s hand as she went back to the tiny dressing room to get ready for the show.

Carrie found a table near the front. Tim and Morris, the lead guitarist and vocalist forCoon Dog County, along with Shantell, their mandolin player, walked in and sat down with her.

“I saw this gal down in K’zoo,” Shantell said. “She does sad songs—silly ones like ‘Honey’ and ‘Kentucky Rain.’ People laugh at her. I hope she doesn’t try to do that here.” She turned to Carrie. “You were sitting with her. You looked pretty cozy. Do you know her?”

Carrie almost said no but then replied, “She’s a friend. I haven’t known her for a long time but we’re pretty close.”

“Why does she do those sappy songs?”

“To get people to laugh,” Carrie said.

Cal got up on stage for the introduction. Carrie hoped with all her heart someone would shed a tear tonight—maybe a truly sentimental person would be there; maybe she would do a song that was the “our song” of a couple who were in love and they would cry when they heard. But she remembered what Shantell—pissy, conceited, bitchy little Shantell—had just said.Calannounced Sylvia by her assumed name.

Carrie waited for Sylvia to come on stage. She expected to see her red hair and outfit like the one Shawn Colvin had worn on the back cover of one of her albums. Instead, she walked out in a garish yellow minidress and huge black bouffant wig. She had somehow got tattoos all over her arms and wore heavy eye make-up. The crowd began to laugh and applaud.

“Good evening,” she said, putting on a British accent. “I’m Amy Winehouse and all these rumors about my use of illegal drugs are totally false. Totally false!” She pretended to adjust her wig and a stream of white powder—it must have been flour—poured out of it, coating one side of her body.

“Oh my!” she stammered. “Now, ladies and gentlemen, this is just plaster that keeps the huge hairpiece—which I, for some inexplicable reason, always wear—in shape.”

She looked about furtively, scooped some of the white substance on to her finger and sniffed it, trembling with ecstasy as she did.

The audience roared with laughter.

Carrie smiled. For a second she and Sylvia shared a knowing glance. She had got the message after all. Carrie settled back to enjoy the show.

For ten minutes or so she kept the audience in stitches with her impersonation of Amy Winehouse.

“Now,” she said, “I want to stop being Amy—stop judging Amy I guess, ha, ha—but if I go backstage to change I’ll lose momentum. So I guess I’ll go back to black.”

With that she threw off the wig and shed the dress. Beneath she wore a black bra, lacy black underpants, and black thigh-highs. This got a huge laugh and round of prolonged applause—and whistles from the men. Carried noted what marvelous shape she was in—but remembered that if you were a ghost the shape of your body was not a problem. The anarchy of her deed and the way she stood and uninhibitedly told jokes about sex, lingerie, training bras, tan lines, breast size, and every bawdy matter related to these things, kept the audience on a roar. Carrie noticed that even Shantell was laughing.

In fact, she was laughing so hard she was crying.

At her request, Cal brought her slacks. She put them on and did the rest of the show barefoot and in pants and her bra. She flawlessly told a series of hilarious stories, jokes, and anecdotes. People were laughing with tears trickling down their cheeks. It had worked. After forty-five minutes of comedy, she said good-night, whipped off her bra, shook herself, then ran offstage, brandishing the black brazier high in the air as she sprinted for the dressing room.

Shantell wiped her tears.

“God, she’s funny!” she exclaimed.

“What was all that shit you told us about her singing sad songs?” Morris asked.

Shantell put up her hands.

“She sure didn’t do this kind of thing when I saw her in Kalamazoo.She’s a hell of a lot better at comedy than she is at making people sad.”

Carrie got up to go. Morris reached for her hand.

“Hey, what’s the hurry? You want to go back to my place. We’ve got some Jack Daniels and some other people are coming over.”

She almost said she would but then said no, not tonight.

“Sylvia’s leaving the area for a while and I want to say good-bye to her.”

“Sylvia?” Shantell echoed. “I thought he said her name was Paula.”

“Paula is her stage name. Her real name is Sylvia. I’ll see you guys later.”

She went back to the dressing room. She noticed people were tossing lots of money into the tip jar at the front of the stage. She stopped at the door of the dressing room and tapped on it.

“It’s me,” she said.

She heard the lock click and slipped inside when the door came open.

Sylvia was there—this time in her true form.

“You did it,” Carried said, beaming.

Sylvia had tears in her eyes.

“Carrie, I don’t know what to say.”

“You might start with ‘thank you’.”

Sylvia threw her arms around Carrie.

“Thank you. Jesus—I owe you my soul. ‘Thank you’ seems pretty shallow. But thank you—a million times a million to eternity.”

“When did you read The Thirteen Clocks?”

“My Mom used to read it to me. It was probably my favorite book growing up. When you wrote GOLLUX on that napkin, I remembered the old James Thurber book about the woman whose tears turned into diamonds but so many people had made her sad to get rich that she was unmoved by any story and had not cried in years. Then Gollux and the Minstrel made her laugh until she cried and got the jewels like that. I knew what I had to do. You saved me with that, Carrie.”

“I’m glad you remembered. My mom read it to me too.”

“And, see, you were thinking about your mother when you came in and it made me think about my mother. So I made the connection.”

“And?”

“I’ll not be going back to my old place. I know that.”

“Where, then?”

“I’m going to some place that is like where I’ve been but the other way.I’ll only be able to live on the edge of it. But the longer I stay there the further in I’ll go. Of course, this will be easier: it will be a place I won’t want to leave.”

Carrie smiled.

“Well, if you meet any angels or saints, tell them I need a lot of help with my music career. I maybe even start doing comedy.”

“I’ll do what I can. I really don’t know much about the place, but we’ll see. I won’t be coming to earth ever again. I”—

A loud knock came at the door. Sylvia turned into her Shawn Colvin self.It was Cal. When they let him in her handed her $200.00 in cash and a wad of bills from the tip jar.

“You were a smash hit tonight,” he said. “Where in the hell did you get that costume?”

“When you’re in my situation,” Sylvia answered, “you just pull them out of thin air.”

Cal did not understand, Carrie could tell, but did not want to seem like he had not caught a joke. He laughed.

“Can I buy you a drink?”

“No. I’ve got a gig a long way off and I’ve got to leave now and drive all night.”

He looked disappointed.

“Too bad. Well, drive carefully.”

She said she would. When he left, she turned back into true form. She also shivered.

“Cold in here,” she said, folding her arms.

“Where did you get that dress and wig?” Carrie asked.

“Conjure,” Sylvia said. She snapped her fingers and the yellow dress she had worn appeared in her hand. She draped it over Carrie’s shoulder. “Keep it,” she said. “Maybe it’ll bring you good luck.” She pressed the thick wad of bills Cal had given her into Carrie’s hand. “Keep the money too. I won’t need it where I’m going. Carrie, I’ve got to get out of this place. I don’t belong here and it is not a good feeling to be here. Bye, baby.”

Sylvia leaned forward and planted a kiss on Carrie’s lips. Then she disappeared.

Carrie stood in the empty room. She could hear the noised of music and people drinking and talking out in the bar. She stuffed the money in her pursed, tossed the yellow dress into her room, and went back into the hot, crowded bar. Shantell, Morris, and Tim were still there. Shantell saw her and waved.

“You sure you don’t want to go with us?” she asked. The look in her eyes was pleading—not her usual snitch-bitch-arrogant look. Carrie glanced at Tim and Morris.

“Two against two is better than two against one, right?”

“You better believe it, Carrie. Will come over?”

Carrie looked at her appraisingly.

“Sure I will.”

Shantell smiled—a happy and relieved smile. The two of them joined the men, who were standing by the stage and talking about what a hell of good comedy act they had seen that night.

Top of Page

 

Exploring a new world has it's own hazards; you never know when something is going to jump up and bite you in the butt. But being under contract to explore new worlds gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "corporate drone"!

 

Skinny Joe

by Sean Monaghan

 

Skinny Joe was reading a video from Paula when he felt the thump. He twisted around, crouching in the low-ceilinged room, and shone one of the lights through the narrow slot into the right hand cistern. The water’s surface was rippling. His tag pipped at him. ‘Go ahead, Gaby,’ he said.

‘Did you hear something?’ she said. ‘Our feeds are going nuts out your way.’

‘I felt something.’

‘I think we’ve got some structure deformation.’

‘I’m going back out to the corridor in a moment. Touching his finger to her lips, he dialed Paula’s video off. ‘See you soon,’ he whispered and slid the screen back into the pen. The sideline text lit up. 8422. He held the pen out over the floor vent again and let it ping. Still 8422. That couldn’t be. ‘Gaby, can you double-check a reading for me?’ He piped the whole feed through to her cubix. Daron was too massive to ever be properly explored. In over four months inside they’d only really been reconnoitring. In another ten days they would be leaving it to the automatic Theos sending remote data. In twelve days he would be light-years away, back with Paula.

‘Okay, just-’

The room shook, and somewhere nearby he heard something breaking.

‘Holy hell,’ Gaby said. ‘What’s going on in there? I’m ... no wait, it’s all green again. Something’s up, the structure doesn’t adjust.’

Skinny Joe grabbed his pack and pulled out one of the Kemmel lights. ‘I’m on it, just check that reading.’ He activated the light with a twist, then crept back to the vent. The pen had to be on the fritz. He held the Kemmel out over the middle of the hole, feeling the slight warm breeze pushing up.Dropping the light, he clicked the pen’s timer. One second, two ... five seconds, still falling. The light spun as it dropped, showing flashes of the sides of the vent, more of the hardened white plastic material, some gaps where he thought it might be branching.

Another shudder and Skinny Joe clutched the vent edge. The light was becoming just a distant fading glow. He wondered about the pressure gradient.

‘Okay,’ Gaby said through the tag. ‘I’m getting some strange stuff on the Theos, right where you’re at. Something further along the corridor, maybe two hundred metres, maybe two-fifty.They’re baby Theos so they haven’t synchronised properly. But I can tell from your Kemmel lines that there’s deformation going on. Are you making good lines Skinny Joe? Five metre-’

‘I always make good lines.’

‘Yeah, you do. So, okay, there’s twisting or compression, something, the Kemmels are pretty dumb, they only know how far apart they are. Did you throw one down your vent? ‘Cos it’s right off the grid now. None of the Theos have built themselves cameras yet, not past you anyway, so I’m blind down there.’

Another shudder, this one deeper and more resonant. ‘I’m going to check,’ Skinny Joe said. Only ten more days, he thought. He pushed himself back across the floor. ‘Did you get my reading confirmed?’

‘Wait a sec. My cubix is putting everything into autodata at the moment. Here it is. You’ve got eighty-four hundred, twenty-two metres, sixteen centimetres.’

The vent was deep. The deepest they’d found so far by a factor of nearly a hundred. The structure went far deeper than they’d ever thought.

‘Hey, that’s vertical,’ Gaby said. ‘Wow.’

Skinny Joe came back to the low room’s opening. The water and the vent must operate together somehow, he thought. He pushed his pack out, then swung his legs around and dropped to the floor.

When he’d come along this passageway, he’d gone by the opening, noted it as they always did, then continued on another hundred metres, placing Kemmels every five metres, as was practice.There were already baby Theos from last week when he’d told them to wheel out this way. One near his foot already had a tiny antenna, a simple emergent camera and a probe, all built right on top of the grey-black block of raw material it would slowly turn into an array of sensors.

None of the passageways had any lighting. Anywhere. None that they’d yet found anyway; there was an awful lot they hadn’t explored, a whole planet worth of structure, that now seemed far deeper than they’d even considered.Was that vent some kind of thermal bore? Had he activated something with his first ping? Ahead of him the Kemmels were still lit, but instead of following a neat line along the base of the left-hand wall, some were strewn across the floor, making the line jerky, irregular. Some of them were upside-down.

‘Gaby?’ he tapped his tag again. ‘We’ve got activity down here.’

‘Yeah, I can tell, but it’s only on the Kemmel feeds. I’ve got no visual.’

Skinny Joe pulled out his pen and took some photos. ‘Are you getting this?’

‘Hold on.’

He took a few steps down the passageway. Daron was a conflicting world.Dead, to all appearances, cold, no tectonics, no atmosphere, but with a pressurised structure that covered the entire the world pole to pole following the contours of the terrain below. An abandoned structure, from the little they’d been able to penetrate. Thousands of years old, perhaps tens of thousands.

Nearly six months ago they’d landed, set up an air-tent over a hatchway on a low plain near a kilometre high rolling mountain range. Whole stretches of the surface were made of a patchwork of carbon compound woven like kevlar, as if someone had draped the whole planet with cast-offs. It took a month to figure out how to open the hatch. And so far they’d dropped down thirteen levels, come perhaps a horizontal kilometre. More empty passageways, conduits, tubes, pipes, tanks, cables, cisterns and shafts, sealed doors and dead ends, some vast rooms hundreds of metres long and wide, some low "corridors" only a few centimetres across, but everywhere just blank walls. No markings, no symbols of any kind. And no activity. Ten days until the grant money finished and they shipped back home. Still, he was looking forward to seeing Paula, even if there were still places to explore.

‘Okay, getting your pictures,’ Gaby said.

Skinny Joe reached the first inverted Kemmel and flipped it over.

‘I’m not getting anything now,’ Gaby said. ‘I was picking up some deformations, but it’s all-’

The floor lurched and Skinny Joe stumbled against the right-hand wall, falling to the floor.

‘SJ?’ Gaby said.

‘I’m-’

There was a tearing sound and the wall and floor fifteen metres from him opened. A jagged dark hole, a metre wide and growing. One of the Kemmels slid in, spilling light for a moment and he could see blue and green within.

‘Skinny Joe? Jesus, my whole map is flaring here. You’re in the middle-’

‘Shut up.’ He got to his feet and started backing up. The hole was more than two metres wide, the floor still shuddering.

‘What the hell is going on?’

Skinny Joe clicked off more photos with the pen, stepping away from the damage. ‘Are you getting this?’ he said.

Something organic reached through the hole. A tentacle, blue with bristling grey hairs, dense at the tip, running in thinner twisting lines along its length.It moved like a scarf on the wind, wafting out towards the ceiling.

‘Shit,’ Gaby said. ‘Get out of there.’

‘Look at this thing.’ He pulled out the pen’s screen and dialled up IR and chem, set it to autosnap fifteen pix a second and send it all back to Gaby’s cubix. The floor shuddered again and he stepped back.

‘Skinny Joe?’ Gaby said.

He kept tapping the screen, somewhere there was an organics sensor, but he’d never used it.‘Are you getting my feed here?’ he said.

‘What?’

‘I’m sending data in to you. Are you getting it?’

‘Get the hell out of there!’

‘I’m-’

‘This is really screwed up,’ Gaby yelled. ‘Just Get Out!’

He looked up from the screen. There were other tentacles now, some slimmer and moving faster. Walking backwards he kept firing off visible light pictures while the pen kept up the data feeds. He couldn’t find the organic analysis program at all. ‘Remember,’ Paula had told him. ‘Use my three rules. First, get data while you can, second you are always researching at the fringes of where the real gold is.’

‘And three?’ he’d asked.

‘Know when to give up.’

One of the tentacles lunged towards him.

‘Skinny Joe!’ Gaby yelled.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘All right I’m going.’ He grabbed his bag and ran fifty metres down the passageway when another tremor tossed him to his knees.He stood back up and looked around.The tentacles were growing, pushing their way down the corridor. Back where they came through the hole into the structure their mass almost blocked out the far Kemmel lights, just a dim glow showed through small writhing gaps.

‘Skinny Joe?’

‘All right, I’m moving. I’m about two hundred metres from the hatchway up to twelve.’

‘I know, but you’ve got another problem.’

‘Problem?’

‘There’s more movement on thirteen. Heading your way from beyond the hatchway.’

He looked down the corridor, but couldn’t see anything different, just the dim glow of the Kemmels leading back to the hatchway. ‘I don’t see it,’ he said.He turned on his beltflashlight, but it didn’t reach beyond the farthest Kemmel. He glanced back and the tentacles were only about ten metres distant now. More like plants, he realised, not octopus or squid. This was some kind of accelerated alien vine, with a root system. Xenoarcheology was his speciality, but he knew enough biology to know a plant when he saw it.

‘We haven’t got any cameras down the other way yet, just new Theos and they’re giving me motion signals. It’s probably a kilometre from you, but moving fast. I think you’ve got maybe forty-five seconds. Whatever it is, it will reach a mature Theo soon, so I’ll be able to get some kind of visual on it.’

‘Can’t you see what it is here?’ Skinny Joe said.

‘This is differ-Are you still standing there taking pictures? Didn’t I tell you to move?’

‘This thing’s slow. Walking pace.’

‘Great yeah, like a basking snake. Anyway that other thing’s not slow at all.Get yourself back up here. I’m prepping for evacuation and Kristen’s on her way down to you.’

‘Okay,’ he said. He took some more pictures, then pocketed the pen and started running for the hatchway again. ‘But we’re not leaving. This is the best thing we’ve found yet.’

‘We are not putting our lives at ...’ she stopped speaking.

‘What?’

‘I’m getting pictures from those Theos. This is not organic. There are dozens of them. Moving fast.’

‘What?’ He could hear something along the corridor. Mechanical.

‘I don’t know. Machines. Like trains, like little bugs.’

‘Bugs?’

‘Machines. Jesus, there are hundreds. Get out of there.’

‘I can’t see anything.’ He kept running for the ladder back up to twelve.

‘I can’t trace them back,’ Gaby said from the tag. ‘They must be coming from somewhere.Something we haven’t found yet.’

Skinny Joe was fifty metres from the ladder when he saw them. They were another hundred metres away, just at the edges of the Kemmel lighting.There were a dozen in the lead. They were white and blue and yellow, slots in their sides, and bumps and probes and other protuberances. Most of the machines were about scooter size, some much smaller. One was the size of a family car. He was nearly at the ladder, but they were coming fast.

Glancing back, he saw the organic was still moving towards him, slower now, but still licking along the walls and ceiling and floor. There were growths on parts of it now, that could have been flowers. He slid the pen out and took more photographs.

‘Skinny Joe!’

He turned, knowing they would be right there. He clicked off a burst of pictures, then jumped up the ladder. Grabbing a rung nearly halfway up, he started climbing fast. The first of the mechanicals, a little slim-legged spider as big as a dessert plate, stopped and began probing the ladder. Skinny Joe stopped and took another photo as the spider shot off. One of the bigger mechanicals impacted the ladder, making it shudder. Skinny Joe kept climbing. The machines slowed, but then another impact and the ladder wobbled back from the edge of the hatch. He swung his weight up on the next rung, and scrambled for the edge of the floor above.

The ladder flipped from another impact and he missed the edge, caught the top rung and was left hanging underneath, the mechanicals speeding by below him.

He pulled up, glancing along the corridor, saw that the machines were stopping about twenty metres further along and were beginning to construct something.

Twisting himself around, Skinny Joe got back on top of the ladder and climbed up through the hatchway. He got his weight firmly onto the floor then bent his head and arms back through the gap.

Two of the bigger machines had stopped on either side of the corridor and narrow holes on their sides were extruding pieces of material fifty centimetres long, about as thick as his arm. Other machines were grabbing the pieces with their pincers and carrying them forward to machines that were welding the pieces together like a trellis.

Further back, more machines were manufacturing flat squares that were carried forward and glued in against the completed parts of the trellis.

‘That explains the blind corridors,’ Skinny Joe said. ‘Gaby are you getting this?’

‘I’m tracking movement on your level too,’ she said.

‘My level?’ He pulled his head up and looked around. Grey-brown walls and the row of Kemmels he’d left earlier, back forty metres to the left-hand turn.He shone his light down the other way, but saw nothing. He knew that further along there was a split ramp, half the corridor angling up, half down. He planned to explore that in their last few days.

‘On twelve, yes.’

‘I don’t see anything.’ He looked back down and snapped some more photos.One of the tentacles had reached through a gap at the top of the trellis and was flicking the little machines aside.

Then Kristen came on the com. ‘Skinny Joe, we’ve got a new problem.’

‘What?’ Another tentacle surged through the gap and pushed a machine away, then began tugging at the edges of the construction, peeling the sheeting away from the trellis structure.

‘Um, we’ve got wall construction here.’

‘Say again.’

‘There are more of the machines here. On twelve. They’re walling off the corridor. Don’t seem interested in me, but they’re going to cut you off soon.’

Skinny Joe glanced along towards the bend. He heard a sound from the other way and shone his light again. Machines, coming from the ramps. Some had stopped already, while he’d been looking down below, and they were constructing another wall between themselves and him.

‘Skinny Joe?’ Gaby said.

‘You’d better move,’ Kristen said. ‘They’re halfway up the corridor.’

‘This is amazing.’ He took more photos. ‘More activity than we’ve even thought we’d see.’ He stood up as thin blue tendrils rose through the hatchway.

‘Skinny Joe!’

He stepped back, another step, photographing the wall and the tendrils. One of the organics had what could have been a simple eye on the end, raised like a snail’s eye, peering around along at the new wall and at him. Then a thicker quick tentacle raced towards him.

‘They’re building this wall fast,’ Kristen said. ‘Where the hell are you?’

‘On my way.’ He snapped a last photo and turned. Running, he could hear the rustle of more tentacles coming up behind him. When he came to the bend, he slowed. There was a new wall ahead, with a gap at the top, small machines were running around the hole, building and sealing. The new wall looked different to the standard walls, kind of the wrong colour, like a patch or a piece of skin-gro on a wound.

Kristen looked at him through the gap. ‘Run, will you?’ she hollered.

Looking back, he saw the tentacles nearly upon him. Some of the thin lead tendrils were already reaching around the corner.

‘Come on, man. They’re bringing up a piece to seal this hole.’

Skinny Joe ran, but the gap was too high. ‘It’s too small anyway.’

‘I thought you were a caver,’ Kristen said.

‘Jump, Skinny Joe,’ Gaby said over the tag.

‘Jump.’ Kristen stuck her arm through. ‘I’ll grab you. I’m standing on one of the machines.’

There were tendrils spreading across the wall and one of the thick tentacles bumped his foot.Skinny Joe jumped and caught Kristen’s hand. ‘The gap’s too small,’ he said.

‘Pull away some of the panels.’ Kristen was pulling at the edges herself, batting away some machines.

He pulled up and grabbed at the edge of the hole, yanking at the material.‘It’s too strong.’ The tentacle pushed on his dangling legs.

Kristen grabbed his other hand and pulled him up and through. The edges of the hole scraped his clavicle, his nipples.

‘It’s too small,’ he said. The tentacle had wrapped around his calf now, was pulling back. One of the machines climbed onto his head.

‘Keep coming, you’ve already got your shoulders through.’

‘It’s too small.’

‘Skinny Joe,’ she said, and gave him another yank. He came out and they tumbled down onto the machine, then to the floor. ‘You are a skinny-ass man,’ Kristen said. ‘We could have got two of you through that hole.’

He lay on his back, breathing. The thick tentacle reached out through the hole. Skinny Joe watched it for a moment, saw it pushing at one of the machines. He stood up and whacked the pen against the tentacle. It shivered, withdrawing just beyond the hole. Skinny Joe rolled out the screen and held it up over the hole, right in front of the little machines.

‘What are you doing?’ Kristen said.

The machine’s tiny pincers grabbed the screen and began welding it in place.The work was rougher, less exacting than the machines had been making on their own, but they kept on welding around and onto the screen and pen.Paula’s video came on, repeating her news. The machines scuttled furiously filling the smaller gaps around the uneven repair, exuding a translucent material over the surface, over the screen.

Once the wall was sealed the scuttling stopped and the machines slowed, then their bases slowly warped until all that was left were rounded lumps, as if they had melted into the wall.

‘It’s done,’ Skinny Joe said. ‘That’s what they do.’ He watched Paula. ‘Not long now,’ she said again.

‘Let’s get back,’ Kristen said. ‘They’ll be extending our grant, I’m thinking.’

‘Oh yeah,’ Skinny Joe sighed. He knew Paula would understand. ‘I’m sorry Honey,’ he whispered to the screen. ‘We’re going to be here for a while longer.’

 

Top of Page

 

Depression can take us to some very strange places...

Carol Mountain

By Barrie Darke

LIKE ALL SLIGHTLY mad ideas, it was the product of a hazy, easily-forgotten deductive leap; boredom at work also came into it. Hendricks had drifted into working as a night-watchman at a midsize plastics factory. Such places, society was given to understand, could be the target of mischievous arsonists who couldn’t know the horrors they would unleash: those jet-black clouds could linger for weeks and have rough consequences for years. Hendricks’ nerve-centre was a terrible old porta-kabin with a phone, a kettle, an example of the first wave of portable TVs (black and white, loop aerial, a dial to change channels), and not much else. After two days he was sick of the sight of the place. Now he’d been there eighteen months.

The deductive leap involved the phone. The thought was that, once long ago, in the evening, his phone at home would ring with the clamour of social engagements and arrangements. Sometimes women rang him and wanted him to go and see them. He had occasionally been prone, he freely admitted, to ringing friends late on, very late on, if he had emotional pressure to relieve. Nowadays there was less of that aspect of life. He was single again, had been for a couple of years after the last shouting match, wasn’t a million miles away from turning forty, and he had arrived at the point where he believed it a feminist lie that a man needed to change his socks every day: one pair, let it be said, could last the week.

So all this was a jumble, floating through, bits of it sticking a little, when Hendricks picked up the phone around twelve on a late-spring night, and rang his own home number.

Self-consciousness would’ve set in before long, crowding out the strangely pleasing image of a drunken passer-by hearing a faint ringing from an empty house, and getting chills over what kind of news this could be. He expected to reach six rings before stopping.

‘Thank God,’ said a woman’s voice, picking up after the fifth ring.

‘Fuck, sorry – wrong number, sorry to’ve bothered you,’ Hendricks gabbled.

‘No, don’t – I’m glad you rang,’ he heard the voice say as he took the phone from his ear. He put it back. There was something about the voice, above and beyond it being a woman’s and possibly a blonde woman’s, that held him. How often was it you heard naked, pleading desperation in another person’s voice? You had to go back to schooldays for that. Also, something was insistent that he’d dialled carefully to avoid just this kind of mishap.

‘Can you help me?’ she asked.

‘Who … Hold on, hold on,’ he said.

‘Can you help, please, I need help.’

‘Wait, just wait. Listen. There might’ve been a mistake.’

‘It doesn’t matter, can you – ?’

‘What number is that?’ he cut in, using his authoritative voice. ‘I know I called you, but I was expecting someone else to answer. So what number is that?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said.

‘Well whose house are you in?’

‘I think it must be yours. Isn’t it?’

‘Are you … okay, listen.’ His thoughts threatened to whip away. ‘Okay, right. What picture’s above the fire place?’ At some unknown point he’d stood up.

‘A picture of Elvis,’ she said. ‘Young Elvis, looking nice.’

He left a pause. Then he asked, ‘Who is this? What’re you doing there?’

‘There isn’t time for all that,’ she told him.

‘I fucking think there is. What are you doing in my, in my fucking gaff?’ He had no clue what he’d been watching on TV to come out with a word like ‘gaff.’

‘They’re coming to get me,’ she said. ‘I thought I’d be safe here, but I don’t think I am. You have to help me.’

‘Fuck off. This is a joke,’ he said. He was shaking his head, as though she could see him and would snap back to reality.

‘You’re someone who can help – ’

‘Listen, listen, I’m coming over now and I’m calling the police. I’m going to have a fucking race with the police to get there. So you better get going right, fucking, now.’ He hung up. He didn’t move.

He didn’t drive, he hadn’t enough money for a taxi, the buses had stopped about half an hour before, and his house was an hour’s walk away. Still, he would’ve gone and flailed away if the person he’d spoken to had been a man. Since it wasn’t, he paced around for a while, then sat back down. He considered ringing his next-door neighbour, to see if they wouldn’t mind glancing through the window to make sure everything was ticking along nicely, but he didn’t know his next-door neighbour’s number, or for that matter their name. He wondered how elaborate an arsonist’s ploy this could be, and decided – though it was already hard to think straight – that there was no way it was.

After a couple of minutes, he picked up the phone again. He was extremely particular in pressing the right buttons. It was picked up again after the fifth ring.

‘I hoped you’d call back,’ she said. ‘I wanted to say sorry, but I didn’t know what else to do, I had to go somewhere. I’m sorry.’

‘Let’s just … let me go through this.’ He forced a calm tone. ‘Is that all right?’

‘I don’t know how much time I’ve got.’

‘Well, we’ll just have to see, won’t we?’ It would’ve helped if his voice hadn’t been shaking. ‘What are you doing in my house, is the first big question.’

‘I thought it looked safe.’

‘You said that before. What does that mean?’

‘I thought it would be a safe haven,’ she said, in a tone that suggested she’d been wrong. ‘I passed it a few times in the night, and knew it was the one. It’s empty at night. Not many houses are. So I thought I should hide away here. Otherwise they’d have taken me already.’

‘Now, wait, just, wait a second. You can’t just … is this the first night you’ve been in there?’

‘It’s the third.’

‘The fucking third? How can it be the fucking third?’ Hendricks knew he was unobservant when not on duty, the same way the cobbler’s children ran barefoot, but surely not to that extent, and definitely not with a woman in the house.

‘I’m sorry. But it’s true.’

‘Jesus Christ … why are – who are they, why are you hiding?’

‘They’re reducers.’

‘They’re what?’

‘They’re reducers.’

‘What … what does that mean?’

‘I don’t know for certain. It won’t be good, though.’

‘Why don’t you call the police?’

‘The police?’ She laughed joylessly. ‘The police won’t last two minutes against this lot. They’ll knock them into scarecrows. They’ll scare the crows away.’

Hendricks sat forward, one hand rubbing his shaved head, which felt very hot and very crammed and engaged in an act of overt betrayal. ‘Just … explain. I can’t ask any more questions. Just explain what I need to know.’

‘I don’t know much myself yet.’

‘Why are they after you? I’m presuming it’s drugs, is it?’

‘No. No, it’s not. It’s the old story. They don’t want us to live like we do.’

‘But what are they going to do? What does ‘reducers’ mean? I mean, are they going to … hurt you, or …?’

‘It’ll be worse than just hurting me. I don’t want to think about that.’

He was up and pacing again now. He even looked out of the window. ‘You said before I was someone who could help. Didn’t you say that?’

‘Yes.’

‘How, then? How can I help?’

There was a pause. It was more than enough for Hendricks to know what she was going to say.

‘I thought you’d know that,’ she said, her voice a wave.

‘How can I know? How the fuck am I supposed to know?’

‘I thought that was the way it works. I’m sorry.’

‘You have to tell me what I can do.’

‘I don’t know either. This has never happened to me before. But there should be someone who can help, who can stop them. I thought it might be you.’

‘How can – ?’

‘Oh … no,’ she moaned. ‘No.’

He could hear her moving, presumably towards the window. ‘What? What?’

‘Oh Jesus,’ she said, the air stranding the words. ‘They’re outside already. They’re in the garden.’

‘Just – tell them you’ve got a gun,’ Hendricks said, his voice rising. ‘Shout you’ve got a gun.’

‘They’ll laugh at that,’ she said, her voice low and rushed.

‘There’s knives in the kitchen. Get one, hold it up so they can see it.’

‘They’re smoking in the garden. Getting ready, I suppose. Getting it out of the van. They’ll be – ’

The line went dead.

As they only ever did in movies, Hendricks stared at the phone before putting it down. He tried ringing again, but this time it wasn’t answered. He thought of the passing drunk again.

He was by now the least fit he’d ever been, in a life without much exercise, but he supposed it was adrenaline that allowed him to run in even the short bursts that he did. He saw not a single soul on the way there, and couldn’t work out if that was something askance or not.

When it got too tough to run, he walked as quickly as he could. He tripped a lot, took less notice of kerbs and so on. At one point he spat, but the spit had bubbling phlegm in it that made it more resilient, and it didn’t fly from him but down him. That was the first time he got angry about all this, though it didn’t last long. Mainly it was anxiety, similar to that of approaching women in bars or clubs, and he didn’t want to think what that meant. He couldn’t think of a time when he’d been more alert.

Eventually he rounded a corner and saw his house. It was still there, not a blackened husk, and he could see from a distance that the windows were intact and the door at least closed. Even the gate was closed, as he’d left it, though this did little to drop his anxiety levels. He gave an eye to the garden, on his haunches. The streetlight was close enough for him to tell there were no cigarette butts, no footprints in soil. He considered it cowardly to look through the window before entering his own fucking gaff, so he unlocked the door and went in.

It was quiet, dark. He stopped himself calling out ‘Hello?’ There was the sense that the house was empty, undisturbed. The front room, where he had the phone, was in good order, and his Elvis picture hadn’t been moved. He checked the phone, and the last number that’d called it was the porta-kabin. He supposed this shouldn’t have given him a chill, but it did.

In the kitchen, the knives were in their drawer. He gave a quick glance around upstairs, then swore and started back to work, running a lot less than he had. It was still deep in the night time, still no one around. All sorts of catastrophes played themselves out in his head, but everything was fine, the horizon remained unlit. He’d forgotten to change his splattered shirt, though.

Hendricks didn’t know how he managed it, but the next evening he waited until rainy midnight before ringing again. He was nervous, blushing, double-checking that no-one was looking in through the black windows. He didn’t think it would happen this time, that it was maybe some atmospheric folly that had opened up in that time period on that one night of the year. On the fifth ring she was there.

‘They’re in,’ was the first thing she said. She seemed to know it was him. Her voice was low. ‘They’re in here. I can hear them.’

‘Where are you?’

‘I’m under the, under the bed.’

He wondered – but not excessively – how that could be working, since he had no extension up there, and the phone wasn’t cordless. ‘What are they doing?’

‘They’re moving around down there. Setting up the reducer, probably.’

‘Can’t you get out? Jump out of the window, even?’

‘Some of them are out there again. Smoking.’

‘Have they got guns?’

‘They’re … kind of guns, by the look of them.’

‘You have to try something.’

‘I’ve tried running. That’s it now.’

‘But you shouldn’t be on your – it’s not just you they’re after.’

‘No, no. There were more of us. We didn’t last long. They’ve got us scattered now. That’s how it works for them. They get you separated, isolated. Now they just pick us off.’

He could almost feel parts of his brain stretching to accommodate this. ‘Where are they from? Whose fucking authority is this?’

‘They have a group authority. They’re … they’re just the new way of things.’

‘Could I speak to them?